Math is fun.


In one of the many abortive attempts a GM tried to run Paradise Lost, I had a character get shot with a Panther Cannon. It was during a weird combat where the GM really just wanted to wound someone. First, the sec guards saw through our Imp Invis spell, despite needing multiple 12's to do so. Then one shot at me with a HP, doing nothing. Then I was shot with a Shotgun, an Assault Rifle and lastly, a Panther Assault Cannon. This was an ork uber-sam, double digit body and double digit armor (10 and 12, so technically double digit), loads of combat pool and 4 or 5 Karma backing that up. I took no damage from anything except the Panther, which I staged down to a Moderate and my Trauma Dampener downgraded to two boxes of Physical and a Stun. (So, after all that, I was Lightly wounded.) Almost all the hits were one or two successes, and this was SR2 so there was no combat pool dodge. I was throwing 12 or so dice on the small tests needing 2's, and 15 or so dice on the big tests. I think I needed 6's versus the Panther, and I probably re-rolled twice to get my 6 6's. (This was about 8 years ago, so the details are a little sketchy.)

That character was pretty sick, but not all that disgusting. He had max ork body plus a bonus from the Superthyroid Gland, and depending on which armor layering rules you used (I think back then is was half the rating of the extra pieces, from FOF), if you had high physical stats (with four levels of Muscle Aug, at least 10's in Str and Quick) you could get away with a lot. In SR3, I remember we limited it to 1 extra piece, which could very well be how the book said to do it.

Edit: Armor was probably a Secure Jacket (6/4) and a Vest w Plates (5/4), Form Fit lvl 3 (4/1) and a sec helmet (2/3). Form fit didn't add into the layering and neither did the dikote, so that was 5/3 and 4/3 for a total of 9/6, below my physical stats, so no penalty. Armor wise it totalled up like (6/4)+(2/2)+(2/0)+(0/2-dikote forearm guards)+(2/3), for a total of 12/11, and the lowest concealability being a 9 (aside from the helmet). I'd have to hunt around for my old character sheet, but I'll bet that's pretty close.

So that's a 12/11 armor rating, with a Perception TN9 to tell its anything other than a guy with a motorcycle helmet on. (My group was okay with dikoting Sec jackets, but even if you throw that out, its only a point off ballistic and maybe 2 off impact-- you lose a point from the dikote and another halving the jacket's 3 impact.)

The book does not limit you to wearing any particular number of pieces of armor. However, except for armor that is specifically an addition, it does limit the calculation of the total armor value to the two highest-valued pieces in the given category. I guess the idea is that if you really hate having combat pool that much, they're not going to make you keep it.

~J

Easy enough to get an armor of 9 without penalty.
Quickness of 8+ and Form-Fitting-Full-Body 1/4 and a Camo Full Suit 3/5 plus Kevlar Bones and Orthoskin of at least level 2 makes for 9 Armor without any penalty, if i did not jumble something up in my head again. if you actually get to wear military grade heavy armor with that character you're at 11 points of Ballistic armor and 9 points of Impact armor . . and those 11 points of ballistics count ALL as Hardened armor, so even a Shotgun hit face on will just bounce off of you. Because of the Rules, nothing short of a Sniper Rifle, Rocket-Weapon or PAC will have even a remote Chance of hurting you. . . Ok, most Close-Combat-Weapons will but meh *g* . . and that does not take into account the option of dikoteing yourself instead of your familiar for a change ^^

Edit: as you may have noticed: yes, i am the combat monkey of our group <.<

As I've said before, FFBA is the bane of my existance. I hate it so much as I've dealt with it as a GM for years.

Hah! The Victory Autocannon is 20D! I knew the cannons topped out at 20.

~J

maybe, but if you want a portable version of that(meaning not vehicle mounted) even I would call you munchkin/powergamer *g*

Hey, you know, it only masses 105 kilos without (117.5 or 120 with a belt of 100, depending on whether you go with standard or AV ammo).

Which is another thing to consider—the ammo supposedly masses between 0.125 and 0.150 kilos per round. Now, we all know that the canon masses are fucking insane, and that rounds for the Raecor Sting (a lemon-squeezer-style holdout) and the Stoner-Ares HMG have exactly the same mass, but we might at least be able to get a general idea of the sort of round size being imagined by considering that.

For comparison, canon standard rounds in SR mass 0.05 kilos per round. Anyone have typical masses for assorted real rounds hanging around? My searches are mostly finding bullet masses.

~J

a .50BMG Bullet weights up to approximately 52grams if i remember my training correctly

a M792 25mm cannon shell weights 501grams. And has a muzzle velocity of 1100 meters per second with a 185 gram projectile. The recoil would be a little high for a man carried weapon I think.

http://www.inetres.com/gp/military/cv/weapon/M242.html

We're talking about a troll-carried weapon, though.

With a full gyromount, and maybe a long spike to jam into the floor for more recoil comp.

Oops, I did it on energy.

But that's a hell of a lot of recoil per shot....

It should be noted that hyzmarca's calculation is an upper bound which assumes that all matter that comprised the round leaves the barrel at 1100 meters/second, including all propellant gasses and the case. Your lower bound will be 0.185kg*1100m/s=300kg*x , or about 0.68m/s , which is the case which assumes that nothing but the actual round itself moves at all. The actual final velocity would be somewhere in between, though where I'm not sure.

For reference, the lower bound for a .50 BMG round fired by 100 kilo human at 882 m/s with a 52g bullet will be about 0.46m/s final velocity for the human. Also note that 300 kilos is pretty light for someone with the height and attributes cited for Trolls—Goodman's "How much did you say he weighed?" article pegs them at 491kg, which would give us a lower bound final velocity of 0.41 m/s and an upper bound of 1.12 m/s.

(I didn't calculate an upper bound on the .50 BMG because I couldn't find a full-round mass, so I don't know how the range stacks up.)

I'd say we've found a reasonable candidate for our assault cannon round—its performance seems about right (the page kzt links to says it "can destroy lightly armored vehicles", which is a little hard to translate into SR terms, but without a Rigger behind it a Lone Star SWAT Hovertruck is taking at least an M wound every shot that hits, though the non-AV shells just put scorch marks on the Citymaster and Mobmaster), and the recoil is in an acceptable range. The ammo's too light, but I'd say enough of the shoe fits to wear it.

~J

If you're leaving scorch marks, you need a bigger gun.

The 25mm round from the Bushmaster is way over the top for a man (or even troll) portable weapon system. The 20x138mm round already requires a huge weapon to absorb the recoil and still has a some chance of breaking your collarbone.

In addition, a many portable weapons won't have the barrel length for any of the KE based penetrators to get up to speed, so you'll be stuck with HEAT for anti-armor work. And the ability of a HEAT round to penetrate armor is directly based on the rounds diameter (and 20mm is not a whole lot of diameter to work with).

The moderate velocity 25mm round used for the XM109 and OCSW makes much more sense as a round for a man portable weapon. And note that you will get the same anti-armor effects at short ranges out of the lighter round being developed by for the XM25 since it uses the same projectile as its larger brother.

The claimed penetration for the 25mm HEDP rounds is between 20mm and 37mm of RHA. Compare this to the ~50mm rha penetration you'll get out of a bog standard 40mm grenade.

Barrel length 2.175 m.

Assuming the same rule of thumb for barrel length and velocity for small arms (3 m/s per cm of barrel), then cutting down the bushmaster barrel to 1 meter would lose around 350 m/s of velocity, giving you a muzzle velocity of around 750m/s (leaving you with only around 68% of the original velocity).

[edit]
For comparison, the XM109 has a barrel length of 73.67 cm and seems to fire it's projectile in the 400-450 m/s range.

For comparison, at that barrel length, the 25mm bushmaster round would be goign somewhere in the neighborhood of 670 m/s.

[yet another edit]
Finally found some estimates for the rha penetration of the 25mm bushmaster APFSDS-T round (around 90mm rha at the muzzle).

So, assuming the muzzle velocity of 860 m/s (the discarding sabot projectile moves faster) from our assault cannon, we get a rha penetration at the muzzle of 40mm rha or less (same source reports regular round @3000 meters @1030m/s @ 48mm rha.

Compare to the 25mm HEAT round from the XM109 that gets ~30mm penetration over its whole range. With much less recoil, a much smaller round, and in a much lighter package.

Don't forget to add the mass of the gun to the mass of the troll for the recoil calculations. 105kg unloaded makes a non-trivial difference.

I don't see why it's so hard to believe a troll could take the recoil. The strongest humans on the planet can drag semi-trailers and jumbo jets. Trolls seem to double that amount of strength, with about double the body mass and weight. It wouldn't be like firing a pop-gun, but I think they'd be alright.